It's a sad fact, but terror does indeed work. And in a free society such as ours, terror wins. A radical statement, on its face - but when examined more deeply, it is nonetheless true.

I am not implying that the terrorists can't be defeated (though it will take extermination/anhillation to do so). I'm not saying that their goal of achieving worldwide Islamic Domination is realizable. But the terrorists have already won a significant victory from which we will never recover. We will never again experience the true liberty and freedom and security our grandparents enjoyed.

The IslamoFascists have adopted a brilliantly effective strategy to erode our society. They use our freedoms and liberties and sensibilities and morals against us. And whatever we do to respond, we lose.

Our foundational freedoms include freedom of religion. We must extend this freedom to the adherents of the radical Islamic faith, or we violate our own constitution.

We are an open society, granting privacy, freedom of movement, protections against a police-state. They use this against us.

We have sensitivities against racial profiling - so we waste time, manpower and materials on searching 80 year old white women in wheelchairs, while waving 20 year old middle-eastern males with expired student visas on thru the gate.

We are so preoccupied with the "rights" of detainees that we can't effectively hold or question them. (Nevermind that the Constitution only grants rights to those "BORN or NATURALIZED" in the US... read it! The Pro-Choice folk love to point this out when denying rights to those not yet BORN.)

Thus, the very things that make us who we are... our "constitution" (both literally and figuratively - as in that which "constitutes" us) make us extremely vulnerable.

On the other hand, when we must change to adapt to this new threat (and regrettably, we must), we give up some of that freedom we have fought so hard for 229 years to defend. We succumb to the terrorists victory. They have successully eroded the fabric of our freedom. We now accept that small reductions of our liberties are necessary to our security. We will never again know the freedoms enjoyed by the WWII generation. How long before we are stopped at checkpoints and challenged with "Your papers, please."

And yet, the alternative is the echoing reverberations of car-bombs and falling buildings... or calls to prayer and kneeling toward the east.

Y'know, seems to me ANY nominee that Bush could LIVE WITH is going to be attacked by the left! It doesn't seem to matter whether the nominee is qualified. The only qualification that matters to these guys is that any "non-controversial" nominee be committed to advancing the liberal agenda! Otherwise, they're persona-non-grata.

Let's remember the Constitution, which the judges, the President and Congress ALL swear to uphold, grants to the President the right and responsibility to name someone to fill vacancies in the judiciary. It's a privilege of the office, and is a consideration for the voting public when it comes time to elect a president. The voting public spoke in November. Sorry, the left lost.

Constitutionally, the role of the Senate in these judicial nominations is advise and consent... not obstruct. Ever since Bork, the left has used "Borking" a nominee as the weapon of choice to keep any but "moderate" (read: liberal) judges from appointments of consequence. If they can't create a public backlash against a nominee by slandering and smearing... they simply use procedures and rules to insure the nominee never comes up for a vote.

I would propose a rule change -- if not a constitutional amendment -- to require a 14 day limit on debate before an up or down vote is given to any and every judicial nominee henceforth, regardless of the occupant of the White House! If there is adequate REAL reason to reject a nominee, 2 weeks of questioning and debate is adequate time to make that case... and history will show that Republicans are far more willing to reject an errant Republican than Democrats are willing to even diminish their lock-step support of one of their own... regardless of circumstances.

Paradox: I'm so sick and tired of the hype and attention being paid to the "much ado about nothing" Rove story, that I'm going to PARTICIPATE in that hype and attention by commenting here!

WHY is this a story? (Rhetorical question: we know it is only because the sharks in the Liberal Press sense blood in the water and an opportunity to hurt the Bush Administration.)

The facts should be clearly enumerated by the administration, and then a total lid placed on further discussion of it.

Fact 1: NO ONE disclosed classified information! While disclosing the identity of a COVERT operative of the CIA is criminal... a the employment status of a NON CLANDESTINE employee of the Agency is NOT classified information. Joe Wilson's wife was not a covert operative for 9 years... and there is no indication Rove ever knew that she ever was.

Fact 2: Rove did not seek outanyone with which to discuss Wilson's wife or any other topic! The press contacted Rove on a Welfare Reform matter - then changed the subject to the Niger story. Rove tried to warn the reporter against putting too much stock in the story - Wilson was NOT commissioned by the VP to go to Niger as he claimed. The impetus for the trip came from his wife who "apparantly worked at the CIA". That's IT. Innocuous enough. His use of the word "apparantly" would tend toward his not knowing this as a certainty himself! Otherwise, normal conversational usage would have been 'who worked at the CIA'.

Fact 3: There is evidence to indicate that Rove's source of the information that Wilson's wife was a CIA employee was from a member of the press! How can he "leak" to the press information that he received FROM the press?

I'd give a Fact 4 if I knew of one... but that's about all there is to say about this non-story. So now everyone can just SHUT UP!

In my alter-ego as a mild mannered Computer Geek, I've been waging a one-man war on cyber-security threats... particularly the Non-Virus type that your typical AntiVirus software will not pick up such as AdWare, SpyWare, Trojans, Backdoors, Browser Hijackers and the like.

Today's home web-surfer needs to be well-armed against these threats, or his PC is an open door to these threats. Poor system performance and annoying popups are the most mild risks. Identity theft and access to personal information elevate the danger.

How dangerous is surfing the web unprotected today? A study was done in 2001 which showed an unprotected clean machine connected to a broadband connection to the internet would come under it's first attack within 30 minutes. In 2003 this was diminished to 30 seconds! There are thousands of infected machines which have been co-opted into SEARCHING the web for unprotected machines to send their malicious code to!

What's the non-techie user to do? Well, besides calling ME to come clean your machine and secure it (which I gladly do @ $50 per hour within my geographical service area!) there are a number of tools out there which you can purchase and install to help protect you.

One of my favorite tools is called Pest Patrol. It has recently been acquired by Computer Associates and re-released under the name E-Trust Pest Patrol. It has been improved with a more user friendly interface, and has excellent "hands off" features allowing it to be set to run automatic updates and run automatic scans. Unlike Microsoft's (currently) free AntiSpyware BETA, (which is also excellent - if you run XP) it will run on Windows 98 and ME as well as Windows 2000 and XP. I've placed their banner below... you can click it to be linked to their site.

Thanks to the recent Kelo vs the City of New London Supreme Court decision, the powers of Eminent Domain have been bolstered and personal property rights weakened. So what can freedom loving Americans do?

Not much, I'm afraid, beyond sending a message of our displeasure. But how shall we do that?

I'd written before about a Viagra boycott to send a message to the primary beneficiary of the New London decision - Pfizer - that maybe their proposed development's displacement of homeowners won't sit well with the general populace of the US. But that might only save a few houses in New London.

How can we express our displeasure to the loonies on the COURT?

Logan Darrow Clements has begun a process that might just do the trick. He's petitioning the town of Weare, N.H., (location of a large piece of property owned by Justice Souter... the spearhead of the Kelo Decision) to exercise Eminent Domain to seize Souter's property for a hotel! Arguing the development would be in the cities interest, Clements petitions the city officials: "Although this property is owned by an individual, David H. Souter, a recent Supreme Court decision, Kelo v. City of New London, clears the way for this land to be taken by the government of Weare through eminent domain and given to my LLC for the purposes of building a hotel. The justification for such an eminent domain action is that our hotel will better serve the public interest as it will bring in economic development and higher tax revenue to Weare."

I'm getting frustrated with both the left (so what's new?) AND the right over the 9/11-Iraq debate newly fueled after the President's recent speech.

The left still drones on: Bush is a liar. No WMD. No 9/11 connection to Iraq...

And the right is sucked right into the straw-man debate. They start spouting how WMD might have been there. Might be hidden. Might have shipped to Syria. They defend the universality of the intelligence. They cite meetings between Al Qaida operatives & Iraqi officials. They cite memos from the Clinton Administration. And maybe they can successfully make a weak argument that gets an AMEN when preaching to the choir. But that's winning a battle in the wrong war! The left has successfully framed the debate over a non-sequitor!! These are NOT the issues, and even the PRESIDENT has allowed the rationalle HE went to war with to be shaped & distorted by the opposition!

Iraq is not about 9/11, (though there IS INDEED a rational connection which I'll close with). It's not about WMD's (though there was legitimate reason to be concerned about them). It's not even about the supposedly flawed intelligence (though the intelligence communities of the entire world shared the same opinion).

Our military actions in Iraq are and SHOULD BE DISCUSSED AS the resumption of the Gulf War Hostilities of the early 90's! We went to war with Iraq under Bush 41 because of Sadam's invasion of Kuwait. We stopped bombing the crap out of his nation under terms of a truce that placed requirements on Sadam, and the terms of that truce were violated routinely, frequently, and systematically. The consequence of such violations over the course of a decade were adequate justification for the resumption of hostilities. The Gulf War never ended... the shooting just stopped for a time! September 11 and our War on Terror simply accelerated the process of getting back to it!

Now on to the promised 9/11 connection:

After 9/11, the US got its wake up call that we are indeed in a War WITH Terror... We had been at war for some time, and it took the fall of the towers to wake us up to the fact that the radical Islamofascists had already been at war with us since the CARTER administration! We simply decided it was time to fight back!

So we went to Afghanistan first as the DIRECT response to 9/11.

The INDIRECT response to 9/11 is the recognition that we are already the TARGET of a Global War OF Terror. As such, Terrorist States (is there any question that Sadam was a sponsor of generic terror?) are the enemy. Let's NOT be derailed by the issue of his direct connection to the attacks of 9/11. Irrelevant!

Excusing Sadam's complicity with terror, sponsorship of terrorist groups, USE of terror against his own people etc. on the basis of the fact that he MAY NOT have been sitting at the table with Bin Laden saying, "Hey let's attack America" is as rediculous as arguing the US had no beef with the Japanese Army after Pearl Harbor... after all - it was the NAVY & Naval Air forces that attacked us!

No. Just as the Japanese ARMY (though absent from that single action in Hawaii) was very much at one in philosophy and purpose with the Japanese Navy - and we would eventually do battle with both their Army and Navy due to the attack on December 7... so too, Iraq is in unity of purpose with the terrorists against the west.

In the name of political correctness, no one wants to acknowledge the true enemy - Radical Islamofascism! But from Beirut to to the 1st World Trade Center bombing, to the Kobar Towers to the Cole and on and on up to 9/11... Terror has had a single face.

The only exception of note in the last 20 years was Oklahoma City... and believe it or not (though it gets NO press) there is a connection even THERE to Islamic Radical terror. Jayna Davis has researched and written extensively on the subject. See her website at http://www.jaynadavis.com/.

Whether in Kabul, Baghdad, Tehran or even Damascus or Riyadh, there are cells of terrorists intent on destroying ALL that is not in their ideological sphere of influence. Until we get thru our thick heads that we are at war with an IDEOLOGY, and not a place or a person... we'll never understand why we're in Iraq... and we'll never understand why things keep blowing up at home.